However, when the stand arrived, I went to attach it to my new monitor and realized, I’m gonna need my moto-tool (Dremel, rotary tool, whatever you want to call it).  The 100mm mount points, the ones I don’t need, interfere with the power connection and the VGA in, and I may also need to trim the area on the top left of the DVI-D connection.

So much for standards.  I guess neither Mag nor monoprice is to blame, but if I had to assign blame, it would be on VESA, because although they have all sorts of lovely specifications on distances and spacing and patterns, they don’t include clearance rules for the rest of the panel.

Just something to keep in mind when looking to mount your LCD, whether it be a TV or a monitor.  Neve rmind the different DVI connector styles that I was unaware of until I went to connect this monitor…

My little “cheater”…

I have number of ideas about this video camera, and a lot more posts in the works about it and the state of video editing software.

Aside from the memory of that, and many others, one of the prime attractions at the ranch that my brother, mom (not as much) and I,  later on, my sister, were quite fond of, was horseback riding.  My dad, who wasn’t so fond of riding, always joked that the only horse he would get on, was a quarter horse.  No, not that kind, but rather the one you put a quarter in, in front of the grocery store.  Well dad, the quarter is now 75¢, and it certainly isn’t a horse.

Her first "quarter horse"

We had tried in the past to put her on one, but she wasn’t so happy about it, and we didn’t even get the quarters in before we pulled her off. But now, between balloons and these “quarter horses”, she can’t get enough, and I still can’t get enough of her.

Her first "quarter horse", the Mickey Mouse car

Perhaps one day, when she is a bit older, we’ll take her to RHR, and see what she thinks of the horses that don’t require quarters…

I am not spoofing anything. I have a legitimate business need to send out emails, where there is no mention of the user performing the action, nor the signer of an agent, nor the server’s id either.

If I set the mail document’s fields, nothing should be changing them.

e.g.
Dim mysender As String, mysenderN As String
mysender = "emaillistedinNAB@myinetdomain.com"
mysenderN = mysender & "@NotesDomain" 'Needed for internal routing only
maildoc.From = mysenderN
maildoc.SMTPOriginator = mysender
maildoc.Sender = mysender
maildoc.Principal = mysenderN
maildoc.INETFROM = mysender
...
maildoc.send (true,false)


If I stop the router, and look at the document in the mail.box, the INETFROM shouldn’t be different, but it is, and it is my email address, well, the address associated with my .id file.

I see far too many posts and things about this in the forums.  I’ve looked and looked, but couldn’t spot how to accomplish this.  Well, I finally read it somewhere, and I can’t remember where, but put simply, if you are working in the mail.box, don’t use the “send” method, simply use the “save” method, and voilà, the mail will leave how you programmed it.

This is my example code for sending a MIME email, with a “spoofed” sender using Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5. Is it perfect – no, but it does work for me…

Dim s As New NotesSession
Dim  Subject As String, SendTo As String
Dim Sender As String, SenderN As String
'the address you want the mail to appear to be from
Sender = "FName LName <flname@domain.com>"
SenderN = "FName LName <flname@domain.com@NotesDomain>"
'Alternatively, you could just use:
'Sender = "flname@domain.com"
'SenderN = Sender & "@NotesDomain"

subject = "This is the subject line"
SendTo = "someone@somedomain.com"
Dim DBmbox As New NotesDatabase("servername", "mail.box")
Dim mail As New NotesDocument( DBmbox )
s.ConvertMIME = False ' Do not convert MIME to rich text			
Dim body As NotesMIMEEntity
Dim header As NotesMIMEHeader
Dim stream As NotesStream
Dim child As NotesMIMEEntity
Set stream = s.CreateStream
Set body = mail.CreateMIMEEntity
Set header = body.CreateHeader({MIME-Version})
Call header.SetHeaderVal("1.0")
Set header = body.CreateHeader("Content-Type")
Call header.SetHeaderValAndParams({multipart/alternative;boundary="=NextPart_="})
'Add the to field
Set header = body.CreateHeader("To")
Call header.SetHeaderVal(SendTo)

'Add Subject Line
Set header = body.CreateHeader("Subject")
Call header.SetHeaderVal(subject)

'Add the body of the message
Set child = body.CreateChildEntity

Call stream.WriteText("<p>")
Call stream.WriteText("<font face=Verdana color=#0288C1 size=3>")
Call stream.WriteText(|<div class="headerlogo">|)
'If you are referencing any external files, images, javascript, you must use a fully qualified URL/Path
Call stream.WriteText (|<img src="http://yourserver.com/images/somelogo.gif" alt="SomeLogo">|)
Call stream.WriteText(|</div></font>|)
Call stream.WriteText(|...some more HTML |)

Call child.setContentFromText(stream, {text/html;charset="iso-8859-1"}, ENC_NONE)
Call stream.Truncate 'Not sure if I need this
Call stream.Close
Call mail.CloseMIMEEntities(True)
Call mail.replaceItemValue("Form", "Memo")
Call mail.replaceItemValue("Recipients", SendTo)
Call mail.replaceItemValue( "From", SenderN )
 Call mail.replaceItemValue( "InetFrom", Sender )
'Since we created the mail in the mail.box, we just need to save it, not send it!
Call mail.Save(True,False)
s.ConvertMIME = True ' Restore conversion

I went hunting around online, and found that 6th Avenue had the TomTom GO 730 for less than I paid for the GO 730 at Best Buy.  So I drove over to my local 6th Avenue, and the price on display was $100 more than their online price.  I do not understand these brick and mortars that sell for two different prices.  I somewhat understand a little markup for the convenience of in-store shopping, and maintaining a store front, but $100 over the online price seems excessive.  When I questioned it, a manager came over, and very quickly offered to sell it at their online price.  Kudos to 6th Avenue for doing that, but I wonder about the unsuspecting consumer that wanders in without the knowledge of the online pricing scam.  What is even sillier, is that I could have ordered it online, and done an in store pickup, and gotten the online price anyway.  Silly, silly, silly.

Moving on from the purchasing experience, I got the unit home, did a full backup (as recommended by many) and went to link the device with my TomTom home software, only to be greeted by this:

TomTom Home - Switch Device Screen

So I figure, OK, this makes sense, let’s switch it. But, I get this warning:

TomTom Home - Switch Device Warning

Nope, sorry, I get this dialog box informing me I can’t without contacting customer support!?

TomTom Home - Can't switch device

Excuse me?  I can’t switch to my new device?  Why? I only had one device before.  This is my first device switch in 6 months anyway!   If someone can explain the rationale behind this message, I am all ears.

So, I go to call TomTom support “The leader in personal navigation”, only to find out that they only operate “Monday through Friday, 8:30AM-7PM and Saturday 9AM-6PM Eastern Time, our support line is now closed”.  For a global company, I expected a bit more from them.  Oh well, now I have to call them during their support hours and see about switching my device.  The journey continues…

I purposely went to a local retailer, Best Buy, to make the purchase because I had a feeling I might need to return it, and didn’t want the hassle of shipping back and forth.  I walked in, and had a look at the units on display and the one I originally picked out, a TomTom GO 630, but it was out of stock.  So, I went with my second choice, a Garmin Nuvi 1300T, which was $50 more.  I walked out of the store with it and thought I had made a decent decision, not ideal, but I thought I give it a try.

I setup the Garmin on my windshield in the parking lot and setup a route to home.  Once I got out on the road, I was immediately under impressed that it didn’t know whether I was East or Westbound on a major NJ highway, and, this model has a compass, so I was really surprised.   I was also not impressed with it’s text-to-speech voices, and their pronunciation.  Beyond that, once I realized that the bluetooth menu wasn’t there, which I guess I overlooked in the feature set (apparently you need to move up to a 1370T to get that for another $135 or so ), I returned the unit.  They still didn’t have the TomTom GO 630 in stock so I left with a refund.

Next day, I went online and did a little more research and did a in-store pickup of a TomTom GO 630.  I was a bit put-off by the lack of traffic, but I knew it had bluetooth, knew I could add traffic, either via RDS-TMC or my bluetoothed data, and thought I could put a 16Gb SDHC card in there, and get a little in-car jukebox too.

Why does the comparison not show any differences other than price?  I found this really odd, so, after hunting around a bit more, I found that the GO 730 has an FM Transmitter, and comes with a docking cradle, two things I didn’t really think I needed, so, I opted for the cheaper one. Based on looking at this compare on the TomTom web site, you would never know that the GO 630 doesn’t play MP3’s, but the GO 730 does.

After having the unit for 3 days, and checking with a forum (www.tomtomforums.com – good response), I realized the GO 630, is some watered down version of a 730, and worse off that a 530? Who makes up these feature sets?  Put a menu item on it that says “Music and Media” and leave out the player?

So, on the screen I get this:

TomTom Music and Media Screen

I thought I’d get this:

TomTom showing 4 icons in the music and media menu (GO 530, GO 730 and GO 930)

But instead, on the GO 630, you will only get:

TomTom GO 630 Showing only 3 icons in the music and media menu

Right from the manual:

Note: mp3 files and Audiobooks can be stored and played on the GO 530, 730 and 930.

I am failing to understand a number of things here.  Why does a model with a lower number, the GO 530 play MP3’s, but not the GO 630, and the GO 730 does?  Past experience has shown, and so have the prices, that as model numbers increase, the price goes up, and so do the feature sets.  So what happened to the GO 630? From what I can read, it was a model originally produced for Radio Shack, but I guess sales didn’t go so well, so they sell them at other stores as well?

Beyond that, I read in a forum that the GO 730’s FM transmitter had been disabled by an update, but was now, in the most recent update, back in as a feature.

So, as of now, I like the features in the TomTom, like the map share stuff, the bluetooth worked OK, but that icon that says “Music and Media” on the menu, just irks me.  I saw the GO 730 on sale for $30 more than I paid for the GO 630, so I am returning that, and getting a GO 730 for now.

If you look at the logos, you should notice some that are easy to read, and some that are more difficult to read and some are just hideous.  With some, it is simply because they use transparent gif’s or png’s, others are simply the whitespace issue.  I’m not going to tackle the transparency issues, although that is certainly something else to consider, but for now, lets zoom in on one:

As you can see, the edges of the logo get lost, especially the bottom.  So, a small change to the overall size of the original image and we wind up with this:

There, that is better.  The logo really starts to stand out.  Sure some slide “designers” might crop your logo and still make it ugly, but at least you gave them a better starting point.

Here is that same full slide, with the adjusted logo on it:

I hope you’ll agree that such a small change can make a drastic improvement.

In making this example slide, I found it incredibly tedious to track down the actual images.  In many cases, I used firebug’s inspect element or the web developer tools to figure out where in the CSS the image was coming from – Another thing to keep in mind when you don’t use a simple <img> tag for your primary logo.

I don’t think the person putting together the slide would look for it, but it may be a nice idea for your site to have a “marketing materials and logos” or maybe a “press collateral” link somewhere.

And for another ineresting logo related page, have a look at Difficulties Faced by Logo Designers.

*Disclaimer - I have no affiliation with any of the companies in the images

Dear Baby Girl,
A year ago, right around this time I was getting ready to go out and take some photos out at Echo Lake or maybe Watchung Reservation as I had normally done on weekends.  I was delayed because I had to use the potty, a word I haven’t used in many years, when I heard your mommy call out for me.  You were on your way to meet us in person.  You were supposed to show up on Monday, but I guess you just couldn’t wait another day.  We made the phone call to the Dr., to grandmas and grandpas and got ready to leave.   When we returned home, we would be a family.

On that day, you changed my life in ways I could never imagine.  I love watching you grow, you falling asleep in my arms, the changes that occur at an alarming rate.   It is truly amazing, how in just one year, you have gone from that tiny little baby I saw naked, to this little girl, that fights back when we need to change you, crawls around screaming,  standing, almost walking, eating, well, tasting, everything you can fit in your tiny mouth.

I look forward to seeing every new joy you bring us in the next year of your life.

Happy First Birthday Baby Girl!

Love,
Daddy

Anyone else witness this in your city?

She is also eating and throwing more and more diverse foods, and now we are starting to ween her off the bottle too.  Something that doesn’t seem to be going as smoothly as the real milk transition.  I don’t think I’ll be writing “the last bottle” too soon.  Diapers getting more “interesting” too

Just this time last year, I was assembling a crib and making what seemed to be daily visits to the doctors that would deliver our little bundle of joy.  It really does go by quickly.  She will be one year young soon, but will always be my baby girl.